Thread: Counters. Halp!

Both mindsets requires you to know unit's strengths and weaknesses.

Day9 just likes to talk a lot which is why it sounds advanced.

The help menu isn't always right. The help menu says that zerglings counter stalkers but I need 2 or 3 zerglings to kill a stalker. A better response to stalkers is hydras and infestors to hold them down while the hydras deal damage. Ultras do fairly well against them too.

The aspect of responses is that you don't HAVE every unit to counter all the time so you need to keep an eye on what you need and respond to your opponents actions.

The quicker that is grasped the better a player will do.

I'm fair at 1v1, I win 3/5 times I'd say. Counter units for Marauders are TBH one of the harder units to counter one-on-one without high ground advantage, especially with the slow upgrade and stimpack, just because of how versatile they are. The only real counters are hydras, banelings, immortals, and all air units.

Banelings aren't very effective against marauder balls. I would say that hydra ling would be a more viable option. Infestors dominate bio balls though.

Immortals are decent against them but I wouldn't trust them to be the backbone of my army against marauders. Maybe with stalker sentry support.

The best unit the zergs arseinal to deal with maras I have found is hydra's with some roach(or lings if you prefer that) and infestor.

I Agree, but I think roach is more microable, and in effect makes it a better option against marines. Mainly because of the hydra off creep speed... You just have to make sure they don't switch to marauder.

Originally Posted by Wraith

TBH I wouldn't play vs AI unless you're trying for an achievement or something. The computer cheats.

Anyways I found that cannons on the high ground work against me when playing against humans. However, I know the computers have full map awareness. Does that mean they can see and shoot on high ground without an air unit?

The computer gets resource cheats at higher difficulty levels, but it's compensated by the fact that the computer is both very predictable... and pretty stupid. Even on Insane, the computer tends to sit on a lot of resources rather than spend them. I wouldn't use the AI as anything but a sandbox at this point. It will not give you a challenge that even a relatively new player would provide. If you don't want to risk rating, play practice games first.

As for playing team games before solo, it doesn't really matter. Practices and habits you learn in solo games apply to team games, and vice-versa. Strategies for the two are often radically different, though. In team games, rushing or at least an early push is almost invariably seen, and each player typically focuses on only a couple of units. Individual players may not have very diverse armies, because they're relying on their teammate to cover the holes their lack of diversity brings.

In a 2v2, a Zerg might go Roaches while his partner pumps Marines. In order to handle the Roaches, you have to pump Marauders, Stalkers, or Roaches of your own... and Marauders and Stalkers get countered by those Marines. To counter the Marines, you need Zealots, Banelings, or Marines of your own... and those units don't fare so well against Roaches. This is how early game often goes in 2v2, and in mirror matches it's often up to whichever team can produce fastest and most efficiently, unless you're able to pull something sneaky off.

A viable strategy for Terran in 1v1 is a Banshee rush - you make just enough units to protect your wall, and then you go straight to cloaked Banshees. It works great if it's not scouted (and you can easily proxy it to make it even harder to scout), but it will generally get your team killed in a team game because you won't have a significant presence in the early game. 1v1 is a very different beast from 2v2 and other team gamemodes (though 3v3 and 4v4 really just turn into pure rushfests, particularly when all-zerg teams are involved.) The basics apply to all gamemodes (i.e. hotkeying, basic unit micro, scouting, etc), but the strategies are often very, very different.

I appreciate the advice - I wasn't looking for 'Build this unit and win the game, omg', just a general viable unit mix for killing Marauders. As it happens I was just missing a couple of things which pretty much made it a ton easier.

Also, as Pizza said, AI vs really isn't the greatest training ground, but it is great for practising build orders.

Also, I could very much use some practise So if anyone is looking for a Protoss player to play against/try stuff with, let me know